January, 2008

In honor of Jake Shields’s upcoming title shot, we’d like to present his first EliteXC fight, which went down at EliteXC: Uprising on 9/15/07 against Renato Verissimo. After the announcer kicks things off with the most unexpected Reginald Kenneth Dwight reference we’ve ever heard, the fight goes to to the ground quickly, where Shields methodically works for the full mount. Unfortunately for Verissimo, Mario “Painfully Late Stoppage” Yamasaki is reffing the match…

Mike Marrello is a Chicago middleweight with a record of 6-1-1. He has fought for the Xtreme Fighting Organization and King of the Cage, with his loss coming at the hands of Terry Davinney via kimura. Davinney has since lost three in a row. Mike Marrello is also a former Marine and joins Cincinnati-bred Luke Zachrich on the show, who is 7-1. Luke has also fought for King of the Cage and Xtreme Fighting Organization. A Dan Severn-trained fighter, Zachrich’s only loss was to Danny Ruiz via a first round armbar.

Aaron Meisner is out of Philly and is undefeated in his three pro fights – all by KO or TKO. He last fought at Extreme Challenge 78. Also reportedly joining the middleweights will be Prince Mclean and his 4-5 record. Like Luke Zachrich, he’s based in Cincy. But unlike Luke, he’s lost five straight and has proven injury prone. He is an interesting selection for the show, since he’s more on a downward spiral and not on the rise. This one is worth keeping an eye on.

C.B. Dollaway, who is 6-0 and has been impressive, will also be stepping before cameras for the show. He was a kick-ass wrestler in college and has improved his striking with every match. He’s out of Arizona and has fought with HDNet Fights, Rage in the Cage and the IFO. His debut featured a TKO slam 17 seconds into the bout.

Great news, Potato Nation: The generous and attractive people at Dutton Books are hooking us up with ten autographed copies of Chuck Liddell’s intense new memoir, Iceman: My Fighting Life, and rather than keep them all to ourselves, we’ve decided to give them away in a weekly caption contest. Check out the photo below — the two CagePotato readers who come up with the best/funniest captions will each get a book. Submit your entries in the comments section and check back on Friday to see who won. Then swing by next Monday as we do it all over again…

It was confirmed today that the March 29th EliteXC/Strikeforce event featuring Frank Shamrock’s fight against Cung Le will also host another high-profile match — Jake Shields and Drew Fickett will meet to decide EliteXC’s first-ever welterweight championship. Ranked #6 on our list of the top 10 welterweights in the world, Jake Shields is a former Shooto welterweight champ who has defeated the likes of Yushin Okami and Carlos Condit during his current nine-fight win streak; his last two fights were for EliteXC, and resulted in first-round wins by stoppage. Drew Fickett is a veteran of Rage in the Cage and the UFC, and complied a 4-2 record in the Octagon including a win over Josh Koscheck. Fickett has never fought for EliteXC before, but he’s won his last three matches since losing to Karo Parisyan by decision at UFC Fight Night 7 in December 2006.

The welterweight championship will be the third divisional belt awarded by EliteXC since its inaugural event in February of last year. The organization crowned Murilo “Ninja” Rua its first middleweight champ on 6/22/07 with his defeat of Joey Villasenor, but Robbie Lawler took the title three months later with his TKO of Rua at EliteXC: Uprising. KJ Noons became EliteXC’s first lightweight champion at the “Renegade” event on 11/10/07 when Nick Diaz’s eyelids tore apart and the fight had to be stopped. We’ll make a wild projection here and say that Jake Shields will be joining their ranks in March — and for the record, we’re fairly certain that Frank Shamrock will use his enormous ground-fighting advantage to put away Cung Le and retain his Strikeforce middleweight belt in the show’s main event.

Jenna Jameson threw Tito Ortiz a surprise 33rd birthday party at the Las Vegas club CatHouse on Friday night, and RawVegas.tv‘s cameras were there. Check out the clip below, which reveals the following:

— An eerily reserved Mike Tyson says he’s finished with fighting.
— Troy “Rude Boy” Mandaloniz thinks Frank Mir will beat Brock Lesnar at UFC 81, but Ortiz is calling it for Brock by stoppage in the second round.
— When asked if he’ll make it to the finals on Celebrity Apprentice, the HBBB gives a long, meandering answer that culminates in “I lasted a long time.” Eh, we saw that coming.
— The UFC treats Ortiz “like shit.”
— Jameson revealed that her and Ortiz are trying to have kids (!), who Ortiz thinks will be “beautiful” (!!).
— Kendall Grove is officially going to be a father. “My shit works,” he says, drunk as hell.
— When Jenna is dancing on stage, people tend to forget about Tito.

Bad news for mixed martial artists who’ve figured out that if you stop using steroids at a certain point before your fight, you’ll test negative — the Nevada State Athletic Commission has announced that it will begin random steroid and drug testing for all licensed fighters as well as fighters applying for licenses. As the article explains:

Selection of licensees for testing will be made in one of three ways:
1. Fighters may be randomly chosen for testing.
2. If there is some indication that a fighter is taking a non-approved substance, they may be tested.
3. If a fighter has previously tested positive for using a non-approved substance, they may be tested.

A fighter chosen for testing will be contacted by the Commission directly and given details on the ordering of the test and the timeframe within which testing must occur…If the test is not completed within the designated timeframe or if a fighter fails the test, the Commission may refuse to license the fighter, it may not allow the fighter to compete, and/or the fighter may be subject to disciplinary action.

In other words, steroids are no longer going to be MMA’s dirty little secret; if you look like you’re juicing (see #2), you will be tested, and most likely busted. As it represents another step toward MMA’s legitimacy in the eyes of the general public, we’re all for random testing, invasive as it might be. And we hope every fighter gets this memo, or else we’ll start seeing dozens of them go down in flames. However, for those who’ve relied on chemicals to reach their level of physicality, it may not be easy to just drop the ‘roids altogether. It’s like when Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series started picking up guys who’d actually seen the show — the threat of public humiliation and imprisonment wasn’t enough of a deterrent for those sexual predators to change their habitual behavior.

Hmm…I’m not sure if that metaphor worked, but basically what I’m trying to say is, Bruce Buffer is a pedophile.

Alvarez had a large number of his Philly peeps in attendance as he worked over Ebanez with well-rounded precision. After a false alarm by the ringside med team, Alvarez finished off his opponent in the second round. The win took Alvarez to 12-1, the lone blemish on his record put there courtesy of Nick “The Goat” Thompson. Ross Ebanez dropped to 16-6.

Paul Daley’s bout went a little differently as Sam Morgan took him down a couple of times early in the fight. However, “Semtex” got back to his feet and the tide started to turn – and fast. A monster right elbow from Daley KO’d Morgan to a 19-10 record. “Semtex” took his record to 17-6-2 and afterwards guaranteed he would beat Alvarez – if/when they fight.

Oh yeah, and two chicks fought – which is always cool. Tonya Evinger trained with Ken Shamrock for almost two months before Friday’s fight with Julie Kedzie, who she wrapped up in a rear-naked choke early in the first round for her sixth win in nine fights. No word if Ryan Shamrock sparred with her.

Joe Stevenson recently chatted with FightHype about his uber-bloody loss (via submission to BJ Penn) at last weekend’s UFC 80. When asked how he thought he did, Joe Daddy had this to say:

I think I did good. I just got cut. I think it was getting better and better for me and sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.

Or sometimes the bear just kicks your ass. And shame on all of you who thought Joe Daddy was crying like Bob Sapp after the loss. Here’s what he has to say to you:

I saw the tape and it looked like I was crying, but I had something in my eye…my blood (laughing).

I know every time something gets in my eye, I look like an eight-year-old who just witnessed his dog getting hit by a car. Come on! Admit you were crying! We believe you weren’t crying as much as we believe when you said the elbow from BJ “didn’t hurt”.

Regardless if he’s a crier or not, Joe Daddy seems to have gained even more fans and support on the MMA message boards since his showing against “The Prodigy”. Frank Trigg has even said Joe Daddy is the second best lightweight after Penn. Thanks for weighing-in “Twinkle Toes”, you’ve obviously been swimming in bourbon.

(Dong Hyun Kim could soon be scrapping with the likes of Mike Swick and Marcus Davis. Photo courtesy of MMAWeekly.com.)

Most American MMA fans may be unfamiliar with the UFC’s two most recent hires, but both men look poised to punch a hole in their competition. First up is Rousimar Palhares, a Brazilian Top Team member who the UFC just signed to add some spark to their middling middleweight division. Palhares has a 7-1 record, with six of those wins coming via first-round stoppage (mostly submissions), and he won the Fury FC middleweight Grand Prix last month with swift victories over Fabio Negao and Daniel Acacio. Check out this video of his fight with Negao, and the acrobatic leg-lock he finishes the match with at the video’s 3:49 mark:

Joining the UFC’s relatively crowded welterweight division will be Dong Hyun Kim, an undefeated Korean fighter who holds wins over Hidehiko Hasegawa, Hidenobo Koike, and Yukiharu Maejima in the DEEP organization. Five of Kim’s eight wins have come by KO/TKO, including this first-round mauling of Kousei Kubota, who asked for the punishment by stomping on Kim’s feet with shoes on:

So, the dude can bang. Look for Kim to make his first Octagon appearance as early as March.